Eve sat at her desk in the bright light of morning, trying to avoid thinking. A sunbeam hit the back of her head and neck, a warm counterpoint to the perpetual chill of Chelsea. She sipped her coffee and filled her brain with languages and ink.

She’d been neglecting work, and orders had been piling up. It was a relief to sink into it. To focus on the words in front of her, fitting the nouns and verbs together like a puzzle, unique in their rhythms and shapes. And then to feel the smooth, thick paper under her hand and hear the scratch of the nib as she wrote in thin lines of ink. Harvey purred behind her computer, and Chelsea lingered quietly over by the hallway. It all took up enough space in her brain that she was able to ignore all those nasty bad thoughts about magic, murder, and the mortifying ordeal of being known.

She worked until the early afternoon when her phone dinged with a text in the group chat. Ezra had finished work for the day and was ready to meet up whenever Eve and Jon were available! Exclamation mark included.

“Y’all can come over now if you want,” Eve texted back. She stretched, dislodging Harvey from his spot. It would be good to stop for the day, though a few stray orders still needed doing. Writing fake spells for people who believed they were real felt a bit weird now. So obviously, she needed to fix this thing with Chelsea and figure out what was going on with Kyle so she could go back to not caring about any of it.

And Eve and the guys had plans to figure out what the fuck was up with Kyle. Stupid plans, of course, but plans nonetheless. Eve found a half-full cup of coffee on the counter by the sink and chugged it. She shook her head and tapped her fingers against the mug. The clink of metal against ceramic was unfamiliar, as was the weight of the three rings on her fingers. Eve wasn’t much of a ring person—they got in the way of her work—but investigating a demon/vampire/fairy seemed like a good time to try out all the random silver rings she’d acquired over her life.

She held out a hand to Harvey, standing on the stove. He sniffed her fingers and sneezed onto her hand.

“Thanks, babe,” she said, wiping her be-sneezed hand on his head.

When Ezra stepped into the apartment a few minutes later, he brought with him a wave of humid summer air that made Eve want to take off her hoodie. He lingered in the entry in his stuffy nerd clothes, and Eve felt like she was sweating just looking at him.

“Don’t you ever get hot?” she asked. It was at least 90 degrees outside, and as soon as Eve got away from her personal A/C unit, she’d be in a tank top.

Ezra rubbed his neck and looked away. “It’s not that hot out.” He pulled his lanyard over his head and stuck it into the pocket of his dress pants, then fiddled with his notepad. Through it all, he wouldn’t look at Eve. She hummed and let it go. He yawned and tried to stifle it with a hand. His eyes were heavy and a little glassy. Eve turned away and made herself busy. His best friend was a murder victim and he’d turned into a fucking wolf literally two days ago. If Ezra was a little tired and weird, who cared?

Jon opened the door to Eve’s apartment and beamed like he was a lifted truck with after-market headlights shining his brights directly into their eyeballs. Eve squinted and scowled at him. Ezra got weirder. All in all, a pretty normal interaction for them.

With everyone present, they got to work enacting their first—and currently only—plan to test Kyle. Eve sacrificed two of her—well, Chelsea’s—canvas tote bags for the cause. She snipped a tiny hole in the corner of each, then put a square of duct tape over the hole.

“When he arrives, you can rip this off, and voila, salt,” Eve said with a flourish of her roll of duct tape. Jon golf-clapped and Ezra inspected the bag.

“If you’re sure it will work,” he said.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Eve waved him off as she poured a carton of salt into each bag. “Of course it’ll work,” she said.

~~~

They checked Blackwater Coffee House first. Kyle’d been lurking there when Eve had met him, and he seemed to spend enough time there that Maria, the besotted barista, was under his spell.

The coffeehouse was quiet, with a handful of people sitting alone with their laptops and tablets. Some kind of jazzy lo-fi music was playing softly in the background. The tip-tap of many fingers on keyboards made Eve want to sit down and pull out her own work.

Maria the barista looked up from her phone when Eve stepped up to the counter and smiled.

“What can I get you?” Maria chirped.

“Do you know where I can find Kyle?” Eve asked.

Maria blinked at his name and sort of went still. “Kyle? I’m not sure…” she frowned and trailed off. After a second she looked up at Eve. “What can I get you?”

Eve sighed and shook her head. “Tell him I’ll be at Highwater Park.”

As Maria blinked and tilted her head, Eve braced herself and went back out into the heat to rejoin Ezra and Jon. They stood in the shade of one of the outdoor tables’ black umbrellas in silence.

“He’s not here,” Eve said, “but the barista will tell him I asked.”

Ezra looked over Eve’s shoulder and shivered. “You’re right, she’s texting someone.” His brow pulled together and he tugged at the cuffs of his shirt. “It’s so creepy, she looks completely blank.”

Jon craned his neck to see, too, and Eve snagged both of their arms to tug them toward the park. “Come on, we need to get to Highwater Park before him.” Jon happily allowed himself to be pulled along. He was humming something under his breath, chipper as can be.

Ezra, meanwhile, kept looking back at the coffeehouse, chewing on his lip and looking worried. “Do you think he’s really going to come?”

“Look,” Eve said, “it’ll be fine. We’ll test him, get out of there, and go have pizza. No big deal.”

Ezra sighed and stopped looking over his shoulder. Eve steered them toward the park in the center of Blackwood and shivered as she stepped into the shade of one of the huge, old trees that spread out their canopies above. They walked along one of the spiral paths to the fountain in the center. Jon and Ezra chatted about something, but Eve had mostly tuned them out. She ignored the little tingle of anxiety that buzzed under her skin. Instead, she focused on the low burble of water from the fountain, the wet, earthy smell of the water—straight from the lake—and the dappled shadows of leaves dancing on the low wall of the fountain.

Eve sat on the wall and looked up, shading her eyes with her hand. Jon peeled his attention away from Ezra for long enough to look at her, and Ezra followed suit.

“What do we do now?” Jon asked. He crossed his arms and did his best attempt at intimidating, which was somewhat spoiled by the canvas bag with a big smiley face on it.

“You two go be inconspicuous over there,” Eve pointed to a tree some distance away, near a trash can. “When Kyle shows up, you’ll walk between us, leaving a trail of salt from your bags. If he can’t cross it, he’s a demon. If he can, we’ll try something else next time.”

Jon saluted and Ezra grimaced. “What are we going to do if he is a demon? He’ll know we know, then,” Ezra said.

Eve clicked her tongue and shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. He won’t do anything while we’re here. He’ll play it off like a coincidence, but we’ll know.”

She was guessing, of course, but hey, might as well try out that magic Jon kept saying was real. Everything would be fine. Eve insisted.

She was still insisting it in her head, twirling one of her rings around and around on her finger, when Kyle appeared. Eve hated to think it, but she sensed him before she saw him. She tensed, creeping fingers of dread on her scalp and shoulder blades. It was a feeling she’d ignored before when Kyle was around, assuming it was nothing. Eve wasn’t in the habit of listening to her feelings, but perhaps this one was worth paying attention to. It was a feeling of unease, of anxiety. It was a message in the corner of her screen saying “You cannot rest when enemies are nearby.”

And then he was there, strolling into the park like he owned it, a casual entitlement to every step. In the sunlight, there was something odd about him, a distortion like heat waves. A little shimmer that threatened to give her a headache if she stared too long. Eve glanced at Jon and Ezra just long enough to see that they’d seen him, too, and looked back at Kyle. He stared at her, a calculating frown on his stupid face, and Eve smiled. She crooked her finger at him, beckoning.

Kyle approached.